At first, I didn’t choose to be like this. It was out of my control to be born like this, born here and raised like this. But I decided to continue this way at some point, possibly because I had no other choice.
My life? Tragic. At least, for myself, probably like any other human thinking their own life is miserable. I’m skipping most of what happened to me that made me like this, but there are some points in my past that I like to record here.
Until 14, I was almost isolated from society (despite my family’s efforts). It was a cold day in not so cold winter of Shiraz. I saw a girl on Twitter (my first serious social platform experience) who was about 28.
I was 14, but it didn’t stop me from having a crush on her. Ironically, I have always been attracted to older women. She was one of those startup people (in those years, startup events were new and so popular in Iran), and luckily she was planning a new event. I don’t remember how I managed to convince myself to message her, and god knows what strange conversation I started with her. Still, we talked, and I told her about my social isolation. She quickly advised me to participate in that event. She was charismatic and strong. How could I resist?
I signed up for the event and told my family. They just were surprised.
Anyhow a few months passed, and for the first time in my life, I went somewhere in society alone. Obviously, it wasn’t for me. The average age was about 25; most finished their bachelor’s degrees. Me? A middle school boy with bizarre and awkward behavior.
That was the first time I felt “the thing”. I was in an event full of talented people and a great environment, and what can make it better? I was admired there because of my age. But “that thing” made me feel sad, alone. Actually, I never felt more alone in my life. Not even when I was in IRGC’s prison, alone in a cell.
Long story short, after the 3-day event, I participated more in such events for the next months (many of them to see the girl I mentioned earlier). Months passed, and I started to see people in real life. It was unique, but I still felt alone. At some point, I concluded the feeling was because of the age difference, so I tried to participate in groups, events and societies closer to my age.
That was a bad mistake, but an inevitable one. I’m skipping what happened exactly during those days, but my psychosis symptoms started to show up. I developed a severe paranoia and illusion, and guess what? People closer to my age (still older than me) were not that kind to understand me or simply talk about their discomfort with my behavior. Instead, they made fun of me. Not one or two of them, tens of them. Suddenly I was famous in Shiraz. So I collapsed, psychiatrist, anti-psychotics, etc.
The damage was so bad that it took me two or three years to recover.
In those two or three years, in my loneliness (again), I developed strange and dangerous sexual fantasies and fetishes from the internet. Such a great time to discover my sexual identity, so the damage is still with me to this date. And of course, someday I woke up and decided to free myself from the boundaries. I’m not a man; I don’t want to be a man. I want to be a girl, and I showed the signs in my behavior for years.
You probably can understand how much pressure that is for a young, mentally ill boy in a very problematic country. These are just my personal issues during those years, let’s just forget my professional life and my journey to be a star during that time.
A few years passed and I eventually graduated from high school, went to a good university, dropped out because fuck Iranian universities, found a good job, became the star in my professional field, got arrested, and now I’m here.
This was just the introduction to my following words. The “thing” that I mentioned earlier was my very being. Something was wrong with me and I felt it very quickly. Today I look at people, how they become excited about stupid things, how they are easily controlled, and how they continue living without thinking.
I’m not a philosopher, nor a maniac rejected from society. I continue living in society and let me confess, I had loved people from the very first day when I participated in that event and felt the new lovely feeling of being between people to this date. Actually, the loneliness and sadness that I felt was my inability to let go of myself and feel the complete experience of being in a society. But I couldn’t, and I can’t. This is me, with stupid walls that protect me from being happy and my very contradictory mind. My relationship with people is a love-hate one. It’s funny.
Anyway, at some point (recently), I decided to choose a side in my contradictions wherever I could. I chose to kill my beloved inner girl and continue being the cold, ugly person that I am, getting away from people and leaving behind my Twitter account which I really worked for.
Now I just can’t understand people, and probably I’m the problem. I wish I could help them and in return, they could help me, but apparently, it’s not how it works.